01 December,2024 07:08 AM IST | Mumbai | Team mid-day
Pic/Ashish Raje
Spotlight beams emitted from the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus light up the night sky
Participants create artworks at a previous session
Poet Saranya Subramanian (inset), alongside art collective Zinedabad, conducted a workshop yesterday on how to create pocket poetry books from found objects. The participants scoured through found items like leaves, flowers and cloth to weave them into their poetic works.
Pocket poetry books from an earlier edition
"Poems don't need to be confined to pen and paper; they can exist anywhere. Tracing back to the 5th Century, Tamil Sangam poetry was done on palm leaves. We hoped to teach people that anything with intention can be turned into a poem," she shared.
A still from the artist's film. PICS COURTESY/Ohida Khandakar
Few things connected Kelepara in Hooghly to the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum in London before today. Now, artist Khandakar Ohida will be the common link. Her lockdown project, Dream Your Museum, that explores the idea of community museums was honoured with the V&A museum's Jameel Prize in Moving Images on November 27.
Patrons watch the film played at the V&A museum
"The idea [for Dream Your Museum] began during the COVID-19 lockdown. My uncle, a collector since 1973, has stored items including precious stamps, postcards, and some letters from the partition of Bengal in a mud house.
I started documenting his collection as an archive and tried to understand his thoughts," explained the artist who also exhibited at the Mumbai gallery, Project 88, in October.
An illustration of Café Mondegar
For Pune-based artist Subhash Bathé (inset), a trip to the city of Mumbai is incomplete without breakfast at Mondy's or Café Mondegar. The illustrator was in town this week and decided to pay his regular haunt an homage, with a quick sketch.
Bathé's sketch of a patron at Leopold Café and Bar
"Mario [Miranda] is the god who defined Mondegar's for us [artists]," he remarked referring to the legendary artist whose work adorns the café walls. "I love the place, and have been visiting it for the last 30 years.
As an artist, I believe that the best way to document a city is through illustrations and sketches. In fact, I concluded my trip with a visit to another city icon, Leopold Café and Bar," added Bathé.
In a bid to help farm irrigation in the winters, Mission Green Mumbai has teamed up with the Krishi Vibhag of the Government of Maharashtra to install 6200 bori bandhs across Palghar, Thane and Raigad earlier this week. "Bori bandh is an ancient irrigation technique where soil is filled in gunny bags and placed around a water channel to create a dam for water conservation. The installation is usually 30 ft wide and 4 ft high, and allows water to flow directly into the fields, making it easy for farmers to irrigate their crops. This can help them improve production during winter season," Subhajit Mukherjee (left), founder of Mission Green Mumbai, told this diarist.
Chaitanya Prabhu at a previous talk
In order to educate the youth in India about policy-making, city-based NGO Mark Your Presence has launched an online programme for young graduates. "We formulated this programme six months ago and conceptualised the idea as a build up to the youth manifesto movement. This is an intensive three-month long online course starting in December with masterclasses that will help the youth understand how the legislature and Assembly functions," shared founder, Chaitanya Prabhu.
